


the set of the table

by Keturagh



Series: False Fruit [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Horseback Riding, Slow Burn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21934126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keturagh/pseuds/Keturagh
Summary: A halla would never bite like that; she hadn’t known.
Relationships: Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age), eventual - Relationship, solavellan - Relationship
Series: False Fruit [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579504
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	the set of the table

**“I carve a set of dishes. I set the table. There is no table.” (The Dishes Age, Zachary Schomburg, Scary, No Scary)**

\--

“I don’t know much anything about horses,” she had said to Dennet when he’d arrived at this small city growing in the mountains and she had seen, clouding his bright eyes, twisting in his weathered cheeks, the same fumbling, awkward slowness she felt in herself, every damn day.

At Haven there had been wilderness close upon the walls. The people had been quiet, even the ground close and warm and something familiar in the way the earth sprouted between the snows. Fear, yes. Determination in the soldier’s stances, and the unfamiliar chanting around the Chantry doors. But ultimately the quiet danger of the woods had held that mountain town in arm. Tremors of a feeling like something ancient and eldritch still haunting the air. Wind lonely in the night. Wolves threatening the dark. The stars clear around the cut of the Breach. And all men muttering their tales over fires, songs low and breathed in smoke. Like home.

Vivienne asked about her people’s arts. She’d somehow recognized her vallaslin and guessed, correctly, that Pangara knew the crafts of weaving and knits. Dorian pressed her for the intricacies of Elvhen spellwork — she highly suspected Solas had deferred the Tevinter mage’s attentions her way, and this felt simultaneously like a flattery she had not earned and then, when Dorian’s curiosity proved insatiable, like a slightly underhanded trick. She could not talk about the energies of the Fade, manipulating the Veil, and the “theories of relative barrier dispelling under duress of ice encasement” with anything near his level of eloquence or understanding. He did not mean to make her feel so lost. And yet.

And so, the old wood of the stable walls. The way the splinters gripped her hair. Webs lit in the pale cast of sunset, new and shining in the crooks of the stable doors. The softness of a muzzle lipping her palm to take the root she held; warm snorting. “Flatten your fingers,” he’d said, slowly guiding her hand. “You’ll get bit.”

A halla would never bite like that; she hadn’t known.

They spoke together in the dusk. She could escape just as twilight brought the main force to the dining hall. She would take a satchel of nuts and roots and other scraps on her way through the kitchens, Chef gruff over the stoves, waving her on with a look that said both, “No, I won’t send them your way,” and “What, my food not good enough?” While the busy halls of the grand castle filled and filled, she went to Dennet and she said, “I don’t know much anything about horses,” and the first time, he had not smiled at her, but the corner of his mouth had lifted, and the deep lines weathered around his eyes like a sun’s vallaslin had shown her he was glad to have her there, feeling small and tired and like the world had gotten too big too fast, the two of them finding each other just the same, just the same.

“All I ever wanted was a little slice of peace,” he sighed to her, one day.

She was silent, because peace was a thing she had never felt she’d had, or ever missed so much.

But he didn’t mind her silence. And this was the real reprieve.

When he showed her how to care for the hart it was like a place inside the middle of her heart opened up and swallowed the animal whole and she had never seen such kind eyes.

Or such a _nasty fucking temper_.

“Stand _up_ ,” the Master of Steeds shouted, and, pained from her last throw, she hoisted her ass out of the saddle and looked up to the canopy of trees above, praying for whatever guidance could possibly be bestowed on a halla-rider straining her legs and yanking the reins, _too tight_ —

She flew back, and the air was a black torment of whipping visions, and then she was looking up at Solas pulling the reins of his steed — _how did he always look so composed when riding? Where had he learned and how much time had_ he _spent with his ass on the ground?_ — dismounting, coming to her, worried. She only shook her head and covered her eyes, and it was Dennet’s chuckle, low and always the same, that let her collect her frustration and twist it into humor and toss a pinecone, half-heartedly, at the hart’s retreating hindquarters. She didn’t intend to hit it and did not. Dennet rode past them both, trotting to catch the creature’s reins.

Solas’ hand was steady on her back as he tipped her forward. “You are not injured, Inquisitor?” he asked, so tender; and she did not know what to think of him. He had followed them into the woods to collect more plants for his pigments, he’d said. But he had not harvested anything but her own sorry rear, thrown to the ground again and again, since they’d arrived.

“Only my pride,” she’d breathed past the pain in her empty lungs. So rote, too tired and embarrassed to think of anything better. Still, his lips had twitched.

She and Dennet stood shoulder to shoulder (really, shoulder to elbow), and observed the sword-slain creature newly delivered unto this citadel.

“I’ll feed it…?” Dennet had said, slowly. And she had given him a look that was, in all ways, a helpless washing of her hands of all shem magicks and shem gift-giving.

“Sounds… good?” she had ventured.

And then, after another moment of considering silence, they had both, first softly, and then reaching out to support the other’s arms, laughed. And bent over their knees. And when the creature tossed its head and whinnied at them, furious, they had laughed _harder_ ; together, the world in front of them strange and huge and pestilent. Moving faster than a world should move. And, still chuckling, they watched the stars appear through the darkening eve. They waited for the castle to fill with silence. Waited for the earth to gentle like they knew land could, when rolled beneath a sky so full of its own night.

“Guess you’ll have learned a thing or two,” he’d said. 

Meaning she could take his lessons back to her clan. Teach them, if she wanted. But she’d just shook her head and held the bay’s black muzzle in her palms, and fed it roots off the table of her hand; said, “I don’t know much anything,” just revising her sentiment to this, after all this time. And he’d meant it when he’d nodded slow and answered, “Me neither, halla-rider. Me neither.” And she knew. And the castle was quiet, for once, and they’d both leaned against the old wood barn, and, together, wished for a feeling like home.


End file.
